


recessional

by ivorygates, synecdochic



Series: mezzanine [5]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Character Death, Coming Home From The War, Imported, Offscreen character death, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rule 63
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-06
Updated: 2008-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 04:45:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,372
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6456439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivorygates/pseuds/ivorygates, https://archiveofourown.org/users/synecdochic/pseuds/synecdochic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Lord God of hosts, be with us yet; lest we forget, lest we forget.</em>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>At Jack O'Neill's funeral, Daniel finds two voices from his own past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	recessional

**Author's Note:**

> (Originally [posted](http://synecdochic.dreamwidth.org/195036.html) 2008-03-06.)
> 
> We wrote the same story from three different points of view; this is Daniel's.
> 
> Title and epigraph from Rudyard Kipling's [Recessional](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recessional_\(poem\)). Set in 2015.

> `` _God of our fathers, known of old,_  
>  _Lord of our far-flung battle-line,_  
>  _Beneath whose awful Hand we hold_  
>  _Dominion over palm and pine;_  
>  _Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,_  
>  _Lest we forget -- lest we forget!_
> 
> _The tumult and the shouting dies;_  
>  _The Captains and the Kings depart:_  
>  _Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,_  
>  _An humble and a contrite heart._  
>  _Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,_  
>  _Lest we forget -- lest we forget!_

The news had come over the databurst. Not the weekly one. Special. Somewhere between 'emergency' and 'normal', and Elizabeth had called Daniel into her office and told him what had happened, said that of course there'd be a memorial service here too, and from somewhere far away he heard his own voice saying (calmly, reasonably, implacably) that he'd like to go back to Earth, please.

She'd said she'd see if it could be arranged, and he'd thanked her and gone to pack. He doesn't give a damn whether it can be arranged or not, actually, because he knows twelve ways out of the city and six ways into the Gatebridge system and the bypass to take him to the Alpha Site instead of the SGC because after ten years he probably doesn't have a current Earth-IDC and he has no intention of getting spattered over the iris. By the time she comes to find him to say it's arranged, he's packed what he wants to take with him immediately (notes and documentation mostly, and it's only while he's packing that he realizes he's decided that he isn't coming back), and he'd found Teyla and said goodbye, and he's off delivering an exit briefing to the rest of the department. A few hours later he walks through the Atlantis Stargate for the last time. (He'd told Teyla the truth -- not goodbye for a while, but probably for all time -- because he owes it to her, but he thinks the facts of life are better delivered to Elizabeth from a distance; she might change her mind. He can send for his things later. From a safe distance.)

He's never been to Midway before, but he's heard about it. A shrine to techno-geek humor. Snack machines, and a poster (black with two small white dots) and an arrow pointing to a spot in the middle labeled "You Are Here." He waits the prescribed thirty minutes (to guard against the bites of sharks, he supposes) dials through to the SGC, receives confirmation, and steps through again.

The SGC is unchanged.

By dint of implacable stubborn demanding later-later-later-I'm-on-the-clock-here, he gets through his exit processing in just six hours and manages to browbeat travel arrangements and a car out of Graham besides. He promises Sergeant Browning that he will not only build him a shrine, but remember him in his will. (Sgt. Browning has not only gotten his documents out of deep-freeze and updated -- his new driver's license, which expires in 2022, looks bizarre -- but gotten him some walking around cash. That looks funny too. Shiny and plastic-feeling, and Bobby tells him that the hologram is a smartchip and they're down to the fives and they'll be doing the ones next year and that they've taken the penny out of circulation. Interesting information, not relevant right now; he'll catch up.)

He's just got time to hit the mall before his flight. The SGC has provided him with a cargo bag and underwear and basic toiletries, but there are things he needs it can't supply and he doesn't ... actually _own_ any civilian clothing any more (one or two pieces, items with too much sentimental value to get rid of; they're in storage with those parts of his life he didn't ship to Atlantis and they're of no use now, even if he had the time to get them out).

He needs a suit for the funeral.

It's easier to buy two suits than wander around and find a range of items. He's done this before; he finds the most-expensive store in the complex and gets through the entire process -- navy suit, grey suit, ties, six shirts, two pairs of shoes, and a dark topcoat, in forty minutes, watching over his shoulder the whole time (he's on a deadline here; that's all). He's a master of tactics. He wears the grey suit out of the store (the tie is a problem; it's been so long since he's worn one), takes the time at the car to transfer most of his purchases to his cargo bag, stuffs the bags into the trunk, and drives to the airport. Bobby told him to leave as much time as he could for the drive; the city's gotten bigger since he left. So has the airport.

He isn't used to crowds any more. Crowds and noise and bustle and people coming at him from all directions and banging into him, and at the mall it was torture but at the airport he keeps clutching reflexively for his sidearm, for his communicator and he damned near loses it when a couple of TSA guys come up on him -- he knows he's pinging their radar, he _knows_ it -- and he turns around, trying not to back away, trying not to _fucking freak out_ and go for their guns before they do.

Thank God for military ID.

Because of course that's the first thing they ask to see, and they relax a little then -- not a lot, but a little, and ask him if he just got back, and he says 'yeah' (he has no idea where they think he just got back from, but it's the truth) and ask him where he's headed, and he says he's going to Washington for a funeral, and they check all his documents again, and check his ticketing, and then they walk him through Security and down through the gate, and talk to the gate agent, and come back and tell him to have a nice flight.

The gate agent comes over to him and stops a good three feet away (out of reach even for Americans) and tells him he can sit over here if he'd like, Dr. Jackson. It's a seat off at the end of the waiting area, beside a pillar, where he can sit with his back to the wall and mostly-hidden and see the whole area reflected in the window. She tells him that first class boards first, but that she'll come get him when the plane's full so he doesn't have to have all those people pushing past him, and that's when he realizes that she thinks -- they all think -- that he's one of those _crazy people_ on a hair trigger (oh hell no, MacKenzie said he was sane -- years ago -- he's got the paperwork to prove it) and just after that he decides it has been one goddamned long day.

And at that: yeah. He probably _is_ one of those crazy people now. So he musters up everything he's got left of his manners and tries to be reassuring as he smiles and thanks her and says he really appreciates that, thank you. And she smiles back (relieved, apparently, that he hasn't exploded, because he's pretty sure he couldn't have smuggled a gun in here in order to start shooting) and walks away.

The flight doesn't leave for forty minutes, and in theory he could go and get himself a cup of coffee (hasn't eaten since breakfast, and he's not exactly sure how many hours ago that was; it's night outside here, and they gave him a new wristwatch set to local time at the SGC so he can't even try to do the math to figure out time relative to Atlantis Local) but he doesn't want to move. He occupies himself watching his fellow travelers.

Ha. Ha. A joke from before his time. Jack would have appreciated it.

Jack.

At least he'll be there to say goodbye, and he's sure that Jack would mock that as a ridiculous empty gesture (one-sided conversation with an empty room; Daniel knows his own views on the Afterlife, but he never knew what Jack's were and now he never will) but be touched nonetheless, because what is this, after all, but keeping faith with the dead? (Jack said to him once, in an unguarded moment, that dying was his business, and like so many things Jack said to him over the years, it was true and not-true and a joke and a quip and a deeper truth. And if dying is your business, the only thing that makes it bearable is knowing that those you die for, those who survive you, keep faith, and remember. _God of our fathers, known of old, Lord of our far-flung battle-line..._ )

And ten years ago Daniel ran away to Atlantis to escape from the pressures of a life that was about to crack him wide open (didn't exactly work; worked better than staying would have) and Jack went off to Washington, and they might have drifted apart over the years, but friendships like theirs don't end because of little things like that, they just get put on pause. Only 'pause' had been 'pause' for too long; Jack is dead (he doesn't even know how; all anyone's had so far has been the official in-house press release and Daniel knows exactly how much that's worth; he hadn't even had time to dig up the gossip) and there'd been so much neither of them had found the time to say. There might never have been a time. Now there definitely won't be.

When they board him (last, as promised, and he's pretty sure he's gotten a grip by now, but when he woke up this morning, his morning, he'd been in another galaxy, in a clean and quiet blue and silver city in the middle of an ocean, where all he had to deal with was life-sucking space vampires, insane megalomaniac Ancient technology, sociopathic space-nomads, and a few other minor inconveniences) they seat him in the bulkhead window seat, and the steward asks him if he'd like a drink, and he would, but not enough to drink it. They give him coffee, and he breathes carefully through the takeoff, telling his reflexes that this is an airplane, not a Jumper, and they can shut up and go back to sleep.

Unfortunately it's spring over the Rockies and the climb to cruising altitude is rough. He reconsiders that drink several times, but he knows how much of a lightweight he is at the best of times. Which this isn't. (Commercial was still faster than military -- in terms of getting his ass the hell out of Stargate Command -- and too damned many ways for the bureaucrats to hang him up and delay him. He doesn't care what they do to him later, but he will not miss this last rendezvous.)

The flight is hellish. The landing is hellish. Baggage claim is hellish (he's starting to form a theory that _Earth_ is hellish, plain and simple) but at least it's midnight local so it's quiet. Relatively. There are more people in this airport right now than there are in all of Atlantis. Breathe.

There's a man waiting at the luggage carrel holding a sign that says "D. JACKSON." Daniel picks up his duffle and his suit bag and walks by him, head down, focusing his mind on projecting the image of being a local resident on his way home. 

Breathe.

Taxis outside, even at this hour, but ... no. Bus. No. It's been ten years since he was here (airport, city, _planet_ ); he won't fall into the trap of thinking he knows it. Won't stay inside where he can get trapped into a blind corridor, either. _'There's a fine line between paranoia and insanity. We walk that line.'_ He can't remember who said that, or if it was a joke even at the time. If it was, it doesn't seem funny now. Doesn't matter. He can hold it together for another twenty-four hours. Or pretend to. (Breathe.)

If he lives through the next twenty-four hours, though, he's _definitely_ having a word with _somebody_ about protocols for the return of personnel who have had extended offworld stays. (Breathe.)

He sees signs for the subway system -- thank God for the universal language of symbols; he might not have recognized them otherwise -- and heads in that direction. It's raining. Good. Visibility's going to suck.

 _There is nobody following me,_ he tells himself. Firmly. Insistently. But the SGC knows where he's going -- Graham made his arrangements, Bobby helped -- and he didn't arrange for a car and driver at this end. (He knows there has to be a perfectly innocent explanation.)

Breathe.

There's a station inside the airport now, so it's a bit of a hike to the next one (at the far end of the complex, a mile or two). He doesn't mind. When he gets there, he has to offer up his credit card to a machine on the wall in order to buy a MetroPass which will let him into the system. He'd pay cash, but it won't take it; he wonders how you ride the subway if you don't have a credit card. It takes him a while to negotiate the unfamiliar equipment and get his card. When he gets to the turnstile, it won't let him through without both the card and his thumb on a scanner plate. Apparently it isn't 2015, it's 1984.

There's a map in the station. It's only when he gets onto the platform that he remembers that the Metro didn't used to run all night; apparently it does now, though, because the map -- it's touch-interactive, and that's the most familiar thing he's seen today -- lists the hours of operation for various lines and stations. The map has an option of selecting the best route to his destination; he picks a number of destinations several blocks from his hotel and memorizes the routes.

It's almost four in the morning by the time he checks into the Four Seasons. He's walked around a lot of downtown Washington, he's had a long talk with himself about how he can go crazy _eighteen hours from now_ , he's reminded himself that culture shock is part of the price of doing business in his line of work, that he's given the lecture (had given the lecture) to Gate Teams until he could recite it in his sleep, the one about what would kill them as often as not wouldn't be Jaffa or Goa'uld (back when they were a problem) or uncatalogued alien menaces, but coming home and having a nervous breakdown at the WalMart and then running your car into a concrete abutment at ninety miles an hour. Culture shock. (And its bigger meaner brother, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and knowing the label doesn't get rid of the problem.) He tells himself that nobody is out to get him, that the hotel is perfectly safe, that his own reactions can't be trusted. And after a couple of hours of that (he sucks at taking good advice, even when it's his own) manages to go inside.

He's got a nice suite (a very nice suite) and the hotel is used to catering to the eccentric and the crazy. Even at this hour he can manage to get a meal and a pot of coffee. He tips well (25% insanity surcharge added to standard gratuity) and he's probably the only one who thinks it's odd that he stands in the middle of the living room until the food's delivered and he can lock up and finally sit down. He's the only one who knows, after all.

He checked every room and closet when he came in, and after he checks them (again) for the third time he knows: this is bad. And under any other circumstances he can imagine, he'd make the call. He's got a list of numbers, starting with Sam's (has Jack's too, yeah, too bad that's _fucking damned useless now_ ) and ending up with the Emergency Batshit Crazy Warning System for the SGC, and somebody would come and _get_ him, talk him down, take him in. Make sure he couldn't ... cause an incident.

But he has promises to keep.

Sam will be at the graveside. That makes this possible.

He manages to eat about a third of the sandwich and slug back a purely-medicinal shot of vodka (no minibars in the suites at the Four Seasons -- a full bar with full-size bottles; he wonders just how much this place is costing him; doesn't matter, it's not as if he's spent his substantial paycheck on much of anything for the last ten years) and undress and unpack. A shower would be nice (he manages it by leaving the shower door propped open; oh, God, this is ridiculous) and then finds he can't handle the idea of not being able to see the door of the suite when he tries to lie down on the bed. He sighs (more irritated than anything else) and takes the pillows into the living room, where he wraps himself in a blanket and sits on the floor behind the couch (where he can see them but they can't see him oh for God's sake, Daniel, could you pick a _more_ inconvenient time to go stark staring _nuts?_ ) and half-dozes, thinking of a clean and silver city where everything is quiet.

A few hours later (dawn) street-noise begins to jerk him sharply awake (once, twice, again, and oh the hell with it). He gets carefully to his feet, aching and stiff (getting old, Dr. Jackson) with unexpended adrenaline and the fact that he spent the night (what was left of the night) sitting up against the wall because ( _the Wraith the Goa'uld_ ) jet-lag just wouldn't let him get a decent night's sleep. He'll come back after the funeral and have an uncharacteristic amount of alcohol. That should knock him out and let him sleep. His ticket's an open-return. He should check in with the SGC, too (but of course, that would involve checking in with the SGC, and he really doesn't want to talk to them right now. Later.)

Breathe.

He finishes last night's sandwich (dried-out and hard and stale and he's eaten worse) and the other half of the pot of coffee (cold and faintly rancid now). Contemplates ways and means and strategies and approaches (there's something so fitting in the fact that he has to approach Jack's funeral with the same mindset he'd use for a covert insertion) because he'll cop to _a little upset right now_ but not to _stupid._

Jack was a General. Pentagon insider, secret high-security Cabinet-level post. Everything about today will be crawling with security (Secret Service? Maybe. Depends on who's going to be there), and if he wants to even be able to get close enough to show his ID, he needs to ... not look like the man he looked like in the airport last night.

It's acting. Body language. It's about lying (to save your life, to save your team, to save Earth) and he's done it when he was wounded, when he was _definitely_ crazy, when he was facing opposition a lot more professional than the people he's going to have to fake out today. He can do this.

Breathe.

Just a few more hours.

He prepares carefully. Shaves with excruciating care (no cuts or nicks, no missed patches, not today). Inspects his face. He looks like a man who hasn't slept in days, but this is the Four Seasons. A call down to the front desk provides him with a bowl of ice. (And a carafe of orange juice. And more coffee.) He's wrapped up in the plush bathrobe provided by this fine establishment for the use and comfort of its patrons. (Lying by implication: of course: I spent a lovely night. In the bed, even.) He concentrates on being entirely calm; he's doing a fairly good job (he thinks) of separating irrational fantasies from actual probabilities in his mind (the waiter is undoubtedly not either an undercover NID agent or somebody from the SGC sent to yank him back because they've changed their mind about letting him go in the first place).

The judicious application of ice makes him look a bit less as if he's _rabid._

#

It's spring here in the Northern Hemisphere, which means paralytically-cold in Colorado, merely raw in Washington. Arlington is beautiful, calm and green and open. Both working cemetery and national park. 

He has, fortunately or otherwise, been to enough of these productions to know how it's done. Absent or following any church service, the majority of the mourners board buses laid on by the military downtown and are driven to the park (this allows for security checks, since the area around the grave itself is closed to tourists for the duration of the ceremony). The coffin is escorted -- by horse-drawn caisson and honor guard -- through the park, to the gravesite, where a military chaplain of the appropriate branch of the service conducts the military ceremony (trooping of the colors, rifle salute, Taps). The flag is removed from the coffin and presented to ... someone. (Jack got the flag from Daniel's first funeral, and even though he hadn't really been dead, Jack never gave it back. Kept it on his mantelpiece and complained about it bitterly for years as an egregious waste of the taxpayers' money and the reason Daniel would never get another funeral out of the United States Government as long as he lived-and-died. Daniel wonders where it is now.)

He finds Sam at the boarding area (part of his mind set to the task of measuring his breaths, in and out, deep and even and regular and calm). He refuses to react to the people who come up behind him, carelessly-jostling, keeps his reactions to everything deliberately two beats too slow. Won't look. Won't react. Counts minutes and hours and schools his face to an expression of gentle sadness and a faint wistful smile. ( _Dearly-beloved, we are gathered here today...._ Oops, no. Wrong ceremony.) 

Sam looks so startled to see him that for a moment he almost loses control of all the things he's hanging on to (like the strings of a thousand balloons) but she's only surprised that he's here. She thought he was on Atlantis. And yeah, he was.

"So how long are you here for?" she asks.

"Too soon to tell," he answers (smiling, careful, careful). "Yesterday -- I think it was yesterday -- I was overseas. Haven't quite found my feet yet." (Careful, careful.) "Didn't really have time to get all the details, either."

Her face clouds over with more than grief (breathe). "I... I'll tell you later," she says.

They make the most guarded of small-talk during the ride. Not much he can say about what he's been doing, not in public anyway. She's been in Nevada.

The funeral is enchanting, first to last (thank _fuck_ it's short). He and Sam are seated in the first row -- that's his first clue that this is going to be a delightful experience. They're surrounded by thugs with guns. They're surrounded by _soldiers_ with guns. They're surrounded by -- at a conservative estimate -- a hundred billion people, and most of them are behind him. Sitting is bad enough. Standing -- for "Taps" and the salute -- is worse. But then, at least, the color guard is taking the flag off the coffin and folding it and Sam is stepping forward, crisp and soldier-straight, to accept it. _Jack owes me a flag,_ Daniel thinks absently. With the part of his mind that isn't attempting to figure out how to make a break for the treeline (and how the hell did Jack _really_ die if Sam won't tell him and shall he start flagellating himself with guilt now or just be efficient and add that in to the things he intends to do during his long-delayed nervous breakdown? Coming soon to a hotel room near you.)

It should be over then (he would like it to be over; nothing he's ever wanted to be over has been) but people want to talk. To him, to Sam, to each other -- maybe to the trees, he doesn't know, and everybody is up and moving around (except the Marines, thank God for small mercies, who are standing perfectly still) and Daniel decides to see if he can count backward from five thousand rotating through six modern languages (to make it relatively easy and stick with vocabularies containing the concepts) without losing his place (numerically, linguistically) and still smile, and shake hands, and not _kill anybody_ (bonus points for actually making sense, not that anybody here would really notice). What he wants to do is go say goodbye to Jack. Even though Jack isn't really here.

A few people approach the coffin. His desire to stop them is irrational (he knows that, he really does) and he curbs it. "You must be freezing," Sam says, and he blinks at her.

"No," he says (wait one, two, three). "I'm fine, really."

Out of the corner of his eye he sees two people moving slowly toward the coffin; a woman and a young man in a dark suit. The woman is walking with a cane, leaning heavily on the young man's arm, and dress and body language are so at variance that it takes Daniel a moment to realize she's in uniform.

When she reaches the Marine honor guard -- still standing over the coffin -- they ground their rifles and salute her. She releases the young man's arm, returns the salute, and moves on. With one smooth motion, the Marines return their rifles to their shoulders.

"You're jumpy today," Sam says.

(Breathe.) "I thought they weren't supposed to move," he answers.

"Saluting a Medal of Honor holder takes precedence," Sam answers. "Come on. Let's go say hi. You know her."

He doesn't. And he doesn't want to say hi to anybody. But Sam is leading him toward the coffin, so he goes. The two of them (mother and son?) have moved around to the other side, and Daniel had assumed that it was the uniformed woman (someone Jack had known in Washington?) who was the one coming to say goodbye, but it's the young man with her who reaches out to the lid of the coffin, resting the tips of his fingers on it. Daniel sees his lips move, but whatever he says is too soft to hear.

And then he looks up.

Shock has never made Daniel panic (no, an inner voice says to him: _panic_ makes you panic...). Shock makes him freeze, and Jack dealt with that in many inventive ways over the years, and if he hadn't managed to break Daniel of the reflex completely, he'd managed to train him into a number of automatic Things We Do When We Have Stopped Thinking, Daniel. The trouble is, half of them involve shooting, and the other half involve diving for cover, and he can't do either one here, so this time he just stops dead.

And Sam is behind him, and she isn't expecting that (at all) so she bumps into him. Not hard, but right now it doesn't take much, and breathing is ... right out the window. He flinches away, staggering forward; he's moving, and there's only one thought in his mind: to get there, because when he places his hand on the coffin, he's done. But he really thinks it was _unfair_ of Sam not to warn him about whatever it was she didn't warn him about (there's something he's forgetting) because the first time he ever saw Jack, Jack was in his mid-forties. The man standing over the coffin is twenty years younger, maybe more. The resemblance is close enough for them to be brothers, but Daniel knows he isn't looking at a relative, because that man _knows him._ He's looking at _Jack._

He only looks at the woman because she moves, and the impossible ghost standing across Jack's coffin is utterly still. The fact that she's beautiful, that she's somehow not a complete and total stranger (why?) is yet another annoyance on a day that really makes Daniel want either vodka or a machine gun (or a new and better sense of humor, oh, there's an idea).

The young man moves then (he sees it out of the corner of his eye), moving toward the woman, but Daniel's goal is in sight and he takes the last steps forward and places the palms of his hands on the metal lid of the coffin. His dead have been lost and stolen and hidden from him in so many ways: he doesn't even feel grief. Just exhaustion and relief ( _here_ and _found you_ and _I came back, Jack, I did; I never promised to, but I'm here_ ). 

Now he's done and he can go (wherever the hell he can think of to go). He turns back to Sam (it's a long walk back to the hotel, but he's walked longer distances; he'll be fine) but the woman and (oh God he should remember he knows he should) have reached Sam and Daniel is trapped between Sam and the coffin and he still doesn't have his breathing under control and he knows he's got maybe thirty seconds -- tops -- before those ( _spooks fucking spooks_ Jack's voice snarls savagely inside his mind) home in on his wounded-fish-crazy-person body language and he is _not going to be wrestled to the ground at Jack's funeral he isn't._

"You know I --" Sam is saying.

"Take it as read, Sam," the woman says. Her voice is deep for a woman. Southern. Carolinas. Northern region.

"Good to see you, Carter, and for _crying out loud_ let's get him out of this crowd." That's the man. Sounds older than he looks. (And does-and-doesn't sound like Jack, and Daniel takes a step backward.)

Sam looks at him as if she's seeing him for the first time today. "Daniel?" she says cautiously.

"I'm fine!" he snaps (fury and frustration and oh God he is pissed off with the entire universe, with Jack for being dead, with these people -- whoever they are -- for being _strange_ and he'd like to go home, he'd love to go home, if he had _any fucking clue_ where it was). "I'm tired! I'm stressed! My best friend is dead! I've had a really long trip! And I --" He realizes he's let his voice get louder than he should and drops it abruptly. "And I don't know who these people are. I'm sorry. I'm sure they're friends of yours. I've been away for a long time." He looks at the woman, but she doesn't look either shocked or disapproving. "I'm sorry, um, Colonel," he says, and his voice is low and grating. ( _Breathe!_ he tells himself, but he's forgotten how.)

"No offense taken, Dr. Jackson," she says. "Sam's always had Yankee manners. We did meet once, but it was a long time ago and I wasn't at my best." She holds out her hand. "I'm Cameron Mitchell."

Cameron Mitchell. Lead pilot on the 302 Squadron that had saved Earth from Anubis's fleet by saving _SG-1_ from Anubis's fleet. (It's not true that without them Earth would be speaking Goa'uld today. Without them, Earth would be a smoking cinder.) She was the only survivor.

"Oh, God. I -- Look. Colonel. I am, I am so, so --" He's trying to pull away; he finds his hand in hers instead. Warm and strong, and the touch is shocking, but she releases him almost instantly.

"You are very tired, Dr. Jackson," she says firmly. "And you came a long way for your friend's funeral. And it's 'Cammie.' And this is my business partner, JD Nielson."

Someone starts to come up behind them, and Daniel's moving and turning at the same time (reacting helplessly, knowing he has _got to get out of here_ ) and -- JD? steps forward (getting between him and Cameron Mitchell) and says, low, for his ears alone, "I know you remember our good buddy Loki." Then steps back, and says, "Come on. Car's this way."

He's not quite sure how they sweep him up with them. He has a choice between going along with it or making a mad dash through a graveyard and figuring out exactly how to explain that to Sam later. She's walking about a half-step behind him, the other two are a little in front (it should bother him, but he's spent eighteen years in this exact position on one four-man team or another, and for eight of those years it was Sam just behind his right shoulder and having her there again makes him feel better about things than he's felt since Elizabeth called him into her office, and it makes him want to stay right where he is). They aren't going to win any speed records, and he could outrun Sam if he wanted to -- she's in heels -- but he's pretty sure he couldn't outrun JD Nielson. (He wonders what the "D" stands for, since the "J" probably stands for "Jonathan" -- of course, knowing Jack, and that he has to have been involved in JD's naming process, "JD" probably stands for "Juvenile Delinquent".) But whatever his initials stand for, it's a relief to _know_ who he is. Just a few months after Daniel came back from the dead, Jack was cloned. (How much does it say about his life that he can not only come up with a sentence like that -- and have it be nothing more than the truth -- but have it not even be the weirdest event of his life?) The clone was supposed to die. (The clone was also supposed to be an _adult,_ instead of someone accidentally created at Jack's emotional age instead of his physical one.) Jack had made sure that his ... Mini-Me ... survived, and then made him vanish. And here he is. Going by the initials JD, and in a business partnership with a decorated war hero (of a secret war, which really sucks).

The "car" is a Lincoln Town Car (little black dress on wheels of choice for Beltway Insiders) and when they get there, Daniel makes last one attempt to bolt. "Look, I was planning to walk --" he says.

"You'll get mugged," JD says briefly. "Get in."

He stands there, and Daniel thinks he's waiting to help Cammie into the car, but he doesn't. He's just standing there, and Sam pulls open the back door and waits so Daniel gives up and gets in and Sam follows (not fair to make her crawl all the way across the seat in her Dress Blues). And then Cammie's in, and JD walks around to the other side and gets in too. (Didn't even close her door for her; odd, Daniel thinks -- Jack always had excellent manners, and the clone had all Jack's memories. _I wonder if he forgot?_ he thinks. But no, he can't have -- _recognized me, mentioned Loki_ \-- and the fact Daniel can consider the idea for even a moment is more indication that there is something rotten in the state of Daniel Jackson.)

"I don't want to be any trouble, but maybe you could just drop me off at my hotel," Daniel says. "It's the Four Seasons, so it shouldn't be too far out of your way." Not that he has any idea of where they're going.

"And we're all going back to the condo to have mimosas on the sun-deck, and if you want to have a nice chat with Carter about anything even _remotely_ classified, our place has better security than your hotel. Unless, of course, what you actually want to do is pass classified information to the Russians," JD says. He starts the car. "Everybody all buckled up back there? Don't make me pull this car over."

"I can talk to you later," Daniel says to Sam. Tomorrow. Next year. _In another lifetime._

Sam makes an 'I'm sorry' face. "I have to fly back tonight," she says. "How long are you going to be here?"

 _Until they let me out of the asylum, but I don't know if I'll get to take calls there, Sam._ "A while," he says.

"You didn't resign?" she asks in horror.

He stares at her until he realizes he's been staring at her for far too long. "I came for Jack's funeral," he says, speaking very slowly and distinctly and spacing out each word carefully and precisely. "I left _there_ , and came here, and got on a plane, and got off a plane, and went to the hotel, and went to the cemetery. Soon I will get back on the plane, and fly back to Colorado." He stops, because he isn't sure what happens after that. "I didn't resign," he finishes.

"Okay," Sam says cautiously.

"Hey, look, McDonald's," JD says.

"Nielson, you take this car through that drive-through and I will personally _shoot_ you," Cameron Mitchell says.

"That's when you find out I left my half of the company to Focus on the Family," he answers blithely.

"I'm gon' focus on _beating your ass senseless_ , you don't get me to a proper kitchen 'fore some folks starve t'death...." she counters, dangerously.

He supposes it's really bad taste to be bickering like bad-mannered teenagers on the way home from a funeral, but he's actually seen odder customs _required_ of the mourners, and he doesn't know (absolutely) how well either of them knew Jack (aside from the obvious -- in one case -- connection, and that doesn't tell Daniel how they _felt_ about each other). Their back-and-forthing makes a mildly-soothing background noise (which he tunes out, just as he ignores the view outside the windows -- too much, too bright, too fast, too crowded). The drive isn't that long, though it takes them down into the warehouse district.

And there's an inside parking garage with a metal door, and just as they key it and it starts rolling up, JD starts in on a rowdy song with impromptu verses -- the references are topical; he can't follow them -- but the first one has Cammie hooting with laughter, and the second one -- hers -- makes JD yelp, and she's demanding Sam do one, and Sam's protesting, and it comes back around to JD, and then Cammie, and Sam finally manages to come up with one by the time the car is pulling into the garage.

"Looks just like home," Daniel says, getting out and looking around (out on his own side this time; nobody's locked him in). Sixty foot ceilings, poured concrete.

JD's out of the car again and around to the other side, but he doesn't open Cammie's door for her. "Gets better," he says, not looking up.

"I'm guessing there isn't a sundeck, though," Daniel says.

"Not here," JD agrees. "The windows don't even open."

"Small loss in Foggy Bottom," Cammie says. Daniel's come around to the passenger side; he can see that JD is holding out his arm, and Cammie is using it for leverage to get herself to her feet, but as soon as she has, he steps back.

On the way to the elevator and up, JD extols all the security virtues of their place. Sealed bulletproof windows with technobabble coating to confound not only every form of directional listening device known to man ("and dog, and fuzzy little green thing from Alpha Centauri," JD adds) but to prevent any form of video surveillance as well ("and keep the sunlight from fadin' the upholstery," Cammie chimes in). The locks use biometrics as a passive form of information-gathering (you can't get in without supplying your fingerprint, but it isn't part of the lock mechanism -- "too easy to get around," JD says), and a keycard plus keypad-code for access. There's a mechanical-key override, and a mechanical-key backup system ("on my planet we call those 'deadbolts,'" Cammie says) on the inside of the door so you can lock yourself firmly inside. You have to get through three sets of locked doors (elevator, foyer, front door) to get into the condo itself, and all the doors in the entire condo are solid steel. ("Counterweighting those was a bitch," JD says mildly. "Let's all pray for a serious absence of major earthquakes on the east coast, boys and girls.") 

By the time they're done with the explanation, Daniel's (a little surprised to find) he's in the living room. Aside from the fact that he's apparently inside something that can take a hit from something pretty extreme (there'd be more units in the complex than there are, Cammie says, if the walls (floors, ceilings) weren't eight inch thick steel-reinforced concrete, and that's before they put on the -- okay, he can't follow this part but it sounds really impressive -- coating) it looks like a perfectly normal living room. Hardwood floors, carpets (adequate reproductions; nothing spectacular), an enormous couch with a strident (probably hand-knitted) afghan tossed over the back, another couple of chairs.

"And I am going to go get out of this goddamned _monkey suit_ ," Cammie says, "begging ever'body's pardon for cussin' while in Blues, and Sam, you're welcome to raid my closet, always are. Dr. Jackson, I'm sure JD's got somethin'll fit you, you know. Then I'll make ever'body lunch an' we c'n let Sam's hair down."

"I, ah, I'm fine, thank you," Daniel says carefully. Coming to the exotic aliens' home is one thing, but he's always preferred to keep his own clothes on when he gets the choice.

"Well, sure. You just set right there an' we'll be right back." Cammie nods decisively and starts off. "Samantha Eileen, you don't come along, that uniform ain't gonna be worth a Yankee Dollar in about two hours, you know damn well."

Sam shakes her head ruefully and follows; Daniel walks over to the couch. Everything aches in the way he associates (from long experience) with too many hours awake and moving; not too much pain, just a constant pissy low grade _complaint_ from skin and joints and muscles all whining that they were supposed to get a chance to _rest_ by now. (And God, he knows the feeling, and he loathes self-pity -- loathes it -- but he really is starting to wonder if there might just be one or two times in all of human history when it might be justified, at least if nobody else ever has to find out, because at least some sympathy would be an amusing change now and then; it's not two days awake he minds so much, really, it's the ten years before that...)

The couch is comfortable (he wonders why people always preface that with 'surprisingly' -- wouldn't it be more surprising if it weren't?) and it is soothing beyond words to be sitting here in this opulent designer-decorated _bunker_ with no more than three other people (former teammate, clone of his former teammate, pilot who saved his team's collective ass) and not have to worry about anything for a few minutes.

JD stares off at nothing, yanking at his necktie. "You do what you want. You might at least want to take off your tie though. Just a thought."

He walks off. Daniel leans back a little more. After a moment he reaches for his collar. He isn't going to exactly _take off_ random articles of clothing in a stranger's living room (and he actually has very few acquaintances in whose living rooms he'd do it at all, come to that) but he hasn't worn a dress shirt or a necktie in ten years, and the shirt is brand new, and he's always thought that the necktie is one of the more ridiculous vestigial fashion survivals extant (yes, in a universe that includes the _fontage_ ; even so), and it isn't as if unbuttoning the top button of his shirt and loosening his damned tie is going to be something he can't quickly set to rights if he's managed to misjudge the dress code.

He can remember a time (last week, in fact) when he couldn't bear to sit around for even a few minutes without something to occupy his hands and his mind (books or documents or reports or some piece of the eternal puzzle of sentience and civilization, and it _is_ all just one puzzle and one story) and now he can't even be bothered to cross the room to see what titles are in the bookcase on the other wall. He really can't remember the last time he felt this ... something. He runs down the list of 'nots' -- not sick (the SGC cleared him, just to begin with), not injured (he isn't bleeding, and ditto), insanity doesn't make you tired (he's been driven insane four times: by sarcophagus addiction, by Goa'uld they-never-knew-what-to-call-it, by Goa'uld _killing_ devices, by downloading of multiple alien minds, and every single time he found himself bouncing off the walls, padded and otherwise), and he's not really sure what that leaves. This seems both abrupt and extreme for old age and job dissatisfaction, and besides: he's not _that_ old. And he likes his job.

He's just about convinced himself that everything's fine and all current problems can be set firmly at the door of flu, migraines, or maybe sunspot activity (or yes, _fine_ , culture shock and Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome, though he doesn't know what's supposed to be particularly more stressful about the last twenty-four hours than the previous eighteen years; he _came back to Earth_ for God's sake, the one place in the universe where people usually weren't trying to kill him) when Sam sits down beside him. He isn't expecting it; he gasps and jerks back, and his hand is going for the gun he _isn't wearing_ before he digs his fingers into his thigh.

"I'm sorry," Sam says. "I thought you saw me." She's wearing a powder blue jogging suit now with a pale pink t-shirt underneath.

"Half-asleep." He takes a deep breath. "Sam, do you know how many people there are on Atlantis?"

She frowns, making a face (as if she's about to give it her best shot to do an accurate head-count of the next galaxy from Cameron Mitchell's living room). "I know there are always screaming fights over the number of people there at budget time."

Daniel sighs. "You'd think we -- they -- weren't close to self-supporting." He shrugs slightly. "The permanent contingent is nine hundred and fifty people."

"That's a lot," Sam says.

"Sam," he says patiently, "there were about two hundred people at Jack's funeral."

He waits. Sam's smart. She just thinks in a different way than he does. But she gets there. Multiply those people by a factor of five, and you have pretty much everybody Dr. Daniel Jackson has seen in the last ten years. And certainly the largest possible crowd he _could_ see, because in Pegasus, you don't gather in large groups.

"Daniel," she asks. "Are you sure you're okay?"

He's not sure why she flinches back. He hopes it isn't him. He's just so damned tired of people asking him if he's sure he's okay (anybody who can be sure of that is lying) and the funny thing is: he can't actually remember when the last time was that somebody _did_ ask him if he was okay. Life's funny sometimes. "Coming home's just a little bit of a shock," he says. "I'll be fine in a day or two."

Sam smiles (and not like she believes him either), and he just feels ... irritable. And he doesn't want to be irritated with Sam, and he wants to change the subject, and there's only one other subject he can think of. "Tell me what you couldn't tell me before, Sam," he says. "We only got the official announcement on Atlantis, and I didn't have time to get the details at the SGC. What was it? You don't weld a coffin shut for a heart attack."

Sam bites her lip and looks away, and when she speaks, she chooses her words with care. "There was ... a Foothold situation at the Pentagon. General O'Neill got word out. We were able to contain the situation -- completely -- but not before..." Her voice falters, and he'd really like to ask her a number of really pointed questions, starting with _are you really sure >_ and ending with _and which of our friends and allies decided to sell us out this time_ but he sees a flicker of movement and stops. They have company (technically, _they're_ they company, but still).

JD is no longer wearing the dark plain suit he was in less than ten minutes ago. He's now not in much of anything, just a pair of baggy hiking shorts. It takes Daniel a moment to realize that, because he's also heavily-tattooed. Intricate black marks cover him from elbows to shoulders, across his chest, and (Daniel thinks) down his back as well. The shocking implausibility of it makes Daniel stare (JD looks so much younger half-naked).

A moment later Cammie follows him. She's wearing a skimpy tank top and abbreviated shorts and she _needs_ that cane to walk and he hears Sam's breath hitch as Cammie comes into view; he's trying to school his face and discipline his gaze but Cameron Mitchell's body is a mass of long-healed scars and ancient surgical incisions everywhere he can see and her legs are the worst and _If blood be the price of admiralty, Lord God, we ha' paid in full..._. She has tattoos, too -- though only on her legs as far as he can see -- but they don't hide the fact that the outlines aren't quite _right_ in some places. The tattoos don't hide anything at all, really.

He manages to get his eyes up to her face; schooling his expression is beyond him; he lets that part go ( _I told you you should have let me go back to my hotel_ ). He's sorry he was shocked (for letting her see he was shocked) and he won't make it worse by apologizing for his reaction. She probably gets it a lot. Along with every followup he can think of and some he probably can't.

She smiles at him. (Her face is merely pleasant-looking in repose, but when she smiles, she is beautiful.) "Tragic to see you been crippled between the bedroom an' the living room, Samantha Eileen Carter, that you couldn't even stand up long enough to make sure Dr. Jackson had something to drink. Fetch you something, Dr. Jackson?"

He finally manages to stop staring (but at least now it's at her face; her hair is haloed by the afternoon sun behind her and he thinks of avenging angels) long enough to say, "Call me Daniel. Please. And. Um. Water would be fine. You don't have to go to any trouble." Because 'hero' and 'cripple' and other images he doesn't want to consult or acknowledge are roiling around inside his mind, and JD strides off in the direction of the kitchen, and Cammie says -- something -- to Sam, and Sam gets up, and Cammie pivots around on her cane, moving off, saying over her shoulder that she'll get lunch started and...

...and that's about the last thing Daniel remembers.

When he wakes up -- realizing _first_ that he's awakened and _then_ that he fell asleep -- he's lying on the couch in the apartment with the afghan spread over his shoulders, still completely dressed down to his shoes. Strange place (not his quarters) and the habit of caution keeps him from moving so much as a muscle until he's thought things through completely. 

The light's wrong. Mid-afternoon when they arrived here after the service. It's morning now; he slept through the night, but only one, he thinks. He sits up, untangling himself carefully from the afghan. He can't make his mental city-map kick out his present location relative to his hotel, but that doesn't matter. He'll walk until he sees something familiar (or at least someplace to buy food, because two days without food is one thing, but three is ridiculous) and make plans from there.

He rubs his face -- no glasses -- sees the sparkle of them on the end table and picks them up, replacing them on his face automatically. (Corrective surgery can be uncorrected -- by head-trauma, by genetic manipulation, by alien death-rays -- as a couple of the poor bastards who got sucked up in and rescued from Wraith Darts found out -- by whatever new interface Atlantis has come up with _this_ week. Low-tech solutions are often better. Really. He does lectures.)

"I usually have better manners," he says, as JD walks in and sits down in the chair on the other side of the room. Still no more clothes than the last time. His tattooing looks like a Stargate dropped acid and then threw up on him; the symbols are black and sharp and obviously, well, _symbolic_ of something, but Daniel has no particular idea of what. The only one he's willing to assign a preliminary meaning to is the one just below the hollow of JD's throat. That's the Earth glyph, more or less. ( _"If lost please return to..." "This. This is where we're from."_ )

"Jet lag's a bitch," JD says absently, folding himself up into the chair; full lotus, and just seeing him do it makes Daniel's knees and hip-joints scream in protest. ( _'I grow old ... I grow old ... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled._ ) "You want to get cleaned up, there's some stuff laid out in the guest room. Down that hall; it's the only open door." He nods toward a hallway leading off toward Daniel's left. "I'll go kick Mitchell's lazy ass into gear so we don't starve."

"Ah ... Sam?"

"Put Carter on her flight back to the place where they keep the aliens last night," JD says. "I'm sure you two'll catch up." He bounces to his feet again and strolls off and after another moment, Daniel gets to his feet. He considers carefully -- front door's right there -- but he's not completely sure from what he remembers of yesterday's intake briefing that he could get out without assistance and ... he's kind of okay with that. (If he can't get out, after all, nothing else can get in -- oh for God's sake, Daniel Jackson _get a grip._ )

When he goes down the hall, he tries some of the closed doors, just to see. All locked.

The guest-room is tiny, but there's an attached bath and the bedroom escapes the soulless institutional look because its contents are so distinctive. Handmade quilt on the bed and hand-knitted afghan over it (he's been in Pegasus for ten years; there's nothing he doesn't know by now about handmade items) and the dresser-and-mirror (scaled small for the room) is handmade too. He goes through to clear the bathroom (tiny, but there's a shower) then comes back to inspect it more closely, angling himself so he can see the door. It really is beautiful work.

He doesn't feel the same obsessive need to be on-guard every goddamned second that he did yesterday (not that he intends to stand or sit with his back to a door ever again in this or any other lifetime) but it's safer to roll with the crazy than fight it before you have to. He still needs to get back to the hotel, make his return flight arrangements...

...plan the rest of his life. Oh, hey. There's a thought. He sighs, and goes over to close the door. It's heavy, and he remembers JD saying yesterday that the interior doors were steel. That's nice. All they need is an AI and a touchpad interface and he'd have all the comforts of home. Or at least of Atlantis.

Because Atlantis -- Pegasus -- was never really home. Living on Atlantis was like having a girlfriend who was so gorgeous you never understood why she dated you in the first place and who had a football jock brother who beat you up at random intervals for no particular reason; you spent your time alternately stunned at her beauty and terrified of her family and wishing you could have a quiet normal life and knowing everyone else envied you and unable to give her up. (Specialist MacCavitty took an image of the city from one of the Jumpers' cameras and Photoshopped it so that it said "Atlantis: I Wish I Knew How To Quit You" and there'd been posters all over the city for a few weeks and it had been _Ronon Dex_ who had to explain the Earth cultural reference to Daniel. True, he'd decided.)

There's a neatly-folded pile of clothing on the bed (there's a pile of fresh towels and an assortment of new-in-box toiletries in the bathroom), and he looks through it. Socks and underwear and t-shirt and sweatpants and sweat-shirt; there are even a pair of canvas slip-ons in his size. He runs a thumb over the sole. Never worn.

He inspects himself in the mirror, and sighs, and moves over to the pocket closet (checked it earlier) and strips off his tie and his suit coat (checks: wallet and ticket and room key all present and accounted for) and his dress shirt and hangs them up; his topcoat is already there. Sits down on the bed to remove his shoes and socks. (His feet hurt, dammit -- just _how_ many miles did he walk last night in brand-new dress shoes?) Pulls off the t-shirt, too. It stinks: the last hurrah of the ancient primate scent-signaling system, the body telegraphing its intention to fight or die. Or both, of course. He tosses it to the bed and walks into the bathroom to clean up.

He thinks about a shower, but ... either he'd end up putting the bathroom underwater (he's willing to swamp a hotel bathroom, not one in somebody's home) or either JD or Cammie would come in looking for him (he's not quite sure of his ability to ... not react), or he'd be fine, and a thirty percent chance of 'fine' isn't good enough for him, so he cleans up with a washcloth and a sink full of water. (Maybe he'll put in for some leave time when he gets back to Colorado Springs; he'll need the time to get properly resettled on Earth anyway. Clothes, apartment, car....)

The thought of everything he's going to need to do to bring himself back to life _one more fucking time_ (hasn't died this time but the mechanics of self-resurrection are still the same) makes him want to bang his head against the wall. It's rebirth or Atlantis, though, and ten years ago he left Earth to escape the pressure of daily expectation and ten years later he's leaving Atlantis for the same reason and he wonders just where he'll go next.

He comes out of the bathroom (blood sugar's low enough that his hands are a little shaky, but he isn't really hungry) and contemplates the clothes. He can't face his shoes, and barefoot is undoubtedly far too casual (and he and Sam will have a little talk at his earliest convenience about people who take people to other peoples' condominiums and _dump them_ ) so workout clothes it is. He pokes his foot and winces. Starting a blister. 

He feels much better in fresh clothes.

There's no one in the living room when he goes back out, but for all its luxury, this isn't a really large place, and there aren't an infinite number of places they can be. At the other end of the living room, a half-wall divides the space from a small dining room separated in turn from the kitchen area by a counter (too high to eat on, but partitioning the kitchen from the dining room in a fashion that makes sense in the minds of architects and realtors, while keeping both spaces connected and airy). From the sight-lines, the kitchen proper is actually a shade larger than the dining room.

Cammie's standing at the counter; she looks up and sees him and smiles. "Come on in and make yourself at home," she says. "Nielson, get your dead ass up out of that chair and get Daniel a cuppa coffee."

Daniel walks into the kitchen. There's a table in the corner -- two chairs -- and right now it's got two laptops on it, too. JD gets up as he comes in, pulls the table out farther from the wall, picks up the closed laptop and takes it out into the other room, coming back with one of the dining room chairs. By then Daniel has taken one of the dinette chairs, shifted it around so its back is to the wall, and sat down. JD sets down the chair and goes to get another mug, coming back with it and the pot and topping up all three of the mugs on the table.

"You think I didn't see what you just did, you're wrong," Cammie says without turning around.

"Daniel needs room for his coffee," JD says. He pulls his laptop back over to him and seems to ignore both of them completely.

"Must be one damned big mug," Cammie says, apparently to herself. "I wasn't thinking anything special, just cheese omelets with sausage and some home-fries and maybe biscuits and some stewed apples on the side. Won't be a minute." This second speech is addressed, over her shoulder, to Daniel, as she's chopping things on a cutting board, poking something in a pan with a fork, and prodding the contents of a saucepan with a long wooden spoon.

"Fine. Uh. That's... fine. I..."

"Cammie," she says firmly.

"Cammie," he says. "I'm really sorry I fell asleep on your couch."

"Said that," JD mutters.

"Shut _up,_ Nielson," Cammie says. "Think the boy'd been raised in a barn, 'stead of a damned vat."

"Fuck you too, Mitchell," JD says, without heat.

Daniel feels a sudden sense of relief. He isn't awake yet. Or he's suffered a psychotic break. That's the only possible explanation for what he's hearing. (On the other hand, the kitchen is sunny and warm, his back is to a corner -- goddammit, that shouldn't _matter_ \-- and the coffee is delicious. They'd had a theory on Atlantis that the hyperspace transitions did something to the flavor, and they'd never been able to naturalize the coffee berry properly in Pegasus: too labor-intensive.)

"Figured you needed the rest," Cammie says. "Sleep well?"

Since the sentence doesn't contain the word 'fuck,' Daniel tentatively decides it's addressed to him. "Very well, thank you," he says politely. "You have a lovely home," he adds.

JD makes a rude noise, not looking up from the computer. "I am going to sell you to the fucking _circus,_ " Cammie says mildly. "Thank you; _some people_ might not appreciate it, but it makes a body feel better to have some of their own things around them at the end of the day. But this i'nt home, Daniel. We just do a lot of business here, so it makes sense to have a place handy to hand. Family's from Black Mountain. Still there, in fact. And our home base is Colorado Springs."

"Swannanoa Valley," Daniel says. North-western Carolina, the local dialect has ties to a number of interesting linguistic fossils...

"That's right," Cammie says, surprised and pleased. "You been there?"

"He couldn't find it with a map, both hands, and a compass," JD scoffs.

Daniel's about to snap right back -- _oh for God's sake, Jack, when was the last time I got lost; I'm perfectly capable of reading a map_ \-- when he remembers that the reason he's here is that they buried Jack yesterday. 

(The man he is sitting at this table with -- the man he is not looking at -- is not Jack. Nor is it that JD sounds like him, acts like him ... it is merely the assumption of familiarity that has tricked him; there has been no one to treat Daniel with such easy familiarity since he left Earth.)

"I'm sorry," he says. "That was rude of me. No. I've never been to North Carolina. I'm a linguist." He realizes -- as soon as he's said it -- that he doesn't need to introduce himself to Cameron Mitchell, much less tell her half-truths, and wonders just when he managed to lose his grasp of the blindingly-obvious.

"Pretty place," Cammie says, "but it's God's own truth that if I had to live with family underfoot there'd be murder done, because they are _not_ restful. Hard to get work done from Tibet, though, which is why the Springs is a good base of operations. We're flying back tomorrow. Why don't you travel with us?"

That would be the worst idea in a very long history of bad ideas (some were his, some weren't; he suffered the consequences of all of them) and he tries (gently) to discourage the notion without coming right out and saying that he would rather have his brains _splattered all over this kitchen right now_ than have to deal with two airports _and_ her _and_ her tattooed revenant business partner. Somehow she doesn't get the hint. And all through breakfast -- and everything is amazingly good -- Daniel keeps coming up with reasons not to travel with the two of them and Cammie keeps coming up with reasons why it would be easier than easy for JD to check him out of his hotel, for Daniel to spend the night here, for all of them to fly back together tomorrow. Unless Daniel is minded to sight-see here for a day or two. Because she'd been thinking of a little shopping, and _you don't shut up right this second Nielson I'm gonna lock you in the broom closet_ , and it'd be no trouble at all to give Daniel the spare bedroom for a few days, just because it's tiny don't mean the bed isn't comfortable and they made sure to air it out in case Daniel wanted to use it and she's finally managed to _somewhat_ housebreak JD --

(Something about how she's talking makes him add up doors and draw floorplans in his head. Because she'd introduced JD as her business partner, not -- anything else -- and Daniel had assumed this was _her_ home and JD lived elsewhere, but she'd corrected him. But the composition of the condo's layout means that there can only be two bedrooms here, not three, and a thought strikes him and he checks -- unobtrusively -- to see whether either of them is wearing a wedding ring. Neither is. And Jack had always noticed pretty girls and beautiful women, and Cammie is a beautiful woman, and Daniel can't make any of this make sense, because to hear Cammie speak, you'd think they were _siblings_ and none of this adds up. He sets it aside. It's none of his business. He doesn't know either of them.)

Cammie's looking at him, expectant. And Daniel's tempted to say: _for God's sake, just a minute ago you were ready to fly back tomorrow._ And he stops. He is _not_ going to get into an argument with Cammie. He suspects he'll lose. He thinks of one of the people he knew in Atlantis. A woman, a marine, Haruka Rosenberg, nicknamed 'Tokyo Rose' by someone ('she may not frighten the enemy, gentlemen, but she terrifies us') who swore she'd taken the Atlantis posting to avoid the Spanish Inquisition. (Former field interrogator, he'd always suspected -- she'd never given up one iota of personal information in all the years he'd known her -- men did Black Ops, women got to talk to things: walls, their superiors, enemy combatants...) And she'd had the same personal style that Cammie does, smiling, and nodding, and insisting on getting into trivial arguments about _utterly outrageous things_ , and never conceding whatever point she was interested in until you found yourself giving up what she wanted to know or doing what she said. (And he'd never done either one, and she'd said that if he was ever attached to her offworld team she would _shoot him in the Gate Room_ and he'd said he never went offworld -- which was a hopeful lie -- and she was younger than he was and when she died last year she'd been shrunken and wizened and haggard and old.)

"Yeah," he says. "No." He smiles to take the edge off it. He doesn't want to be rude. He just wants his own way. "I'm sorry to have been such a challenging guest. Thank you for breakfast. And for everything. I'm very grateful. But I think it's time for me to get back to my hotel."

Cammie nods. "Well. I cooked, so JD cleans up. And I've got a date with a nice hot tub. So you'll excuse me a few minutes, Daniel?"

He can hardly say 'no.' He stands when she gets to her feet; JD doesn't.

"Would'a thought you were tired of jail cells," JD says, when Cammie's left the kitchen.

Daniel looks down at him, surprised and faintly hurt. JD is apparently counting his toes. JD sits cross-legged in kitchen chairs. "You're going to have me arrested?" he finally says. It's all he can think of.

"No. I'll give you a hundred bucks if you can get from here to the Springs without a warm and intimate chat with the TSA, though." JD pushes himself to his feet and begins stacking plates. "Bet you can't."

"I've always responded well to challenges," Daniel says dryly, sitting down again. The trouble is, he's afraid JD is right.

JD sighs, and takes the stack of breakfast dishes over to the sink. His entire back, Daniel notes, is tattooed, with the same iconography (whatever it is) that runs across his chest and arms. On his back, the design runs down his back in a long wide 'V' shape. Perfectly-balanced; the tattoo was conceived as a single unit. The major symbols mirror each other; it's enough to trick the eye into thinking that both sides of the design match exactly, but they don't.

"The exciting thing about certain forms of hypervigilant states," JD says, just loud enough to be heard over the running water, "is that the first thing to go is your judgment. It's not like panic. You can think through panic. This? You can think that what you're doing is the most reasonable thing in the world. People get hurt. Not because you can't tell what a threat is. Because everything's a threat, and you've learned how to react to threats."

His voice is calm. Dispassionate. He isn't making any accusations. He's just stating facts. Daniel wonders when he started to hate facts this much. ( _Oh, probably when facts started to bite you in the ass every time you turned around, that might be it...._ ) He leans his head back against the wall and sighs, and he'd like to close his eyes, but he won't, because then he wouldn't see JD move.

And when he catches that thought he knows (gut-punch) that JD is right, right, right. (And just who spent the night on the living room floor of their hotel suite because they didn't dare sleep in their bed, Dr. Jackson? Further deponent saith not.) "I don't see how travelling with a couple of strangers will make a difference," he says, and he's trying for neutral, but he knows he sounds _fucking pissed._

JD pauses in what he's doing (his back still to Daniel) and goes utterly still for a moment, and Daniel feels the ghosts of a thousand nightmares try to claw their way up out of his throat, the way you react (the way he's learned to react) when there's suddenly a different person standing there inside the skin of the person in front of you than there was a moment before.

"Well, for one thing, they aren't going to be looking at _a suspicious twitchy man travelling all alone on a last-minute ticket,_ " JD says, and pitch and inflection and delivery are all different than they were a moment before and Daniel has died and come back to life but the ape he keeps caged in the prison of his skull insists that _the dead should lie quiet in their graves._

He clenches his hands into fists and grits his teeth. JD (oh God not JD) goes on talking. "For another, you'll be travelling with a pretty brave heroic girl in uniform wearing the award they don't give out for counting _popsicle sticks_ \-- her presence will carry weight. Third, if you _do_ start to flip out I can make sure you trip and run into a wall if I can't get your attention any other way. Fourth, if you're calling me a stranger, I'm hurt."

"Shut _up_ , God damn you," Daniel says desperately. Right now he would give anything for something, and the terrible thing is, he doesn't even know what he wants.

He reaches for his coffee cup, jerking his hand back when JD turns off the water in the sink. But all JD does is open the dishwasher and starts to load it. When the dishes are in, he turns to the stove for the breakfast pots and pans.

"Where you staying in the Springs?" JD asks idly, eating the last of the stewed apples out of the saucepan with the wooden spoon. And it _is_ JD ... again ... slouching and sullen and half Daniel's age, a man whose vowels have never been within a thousand miles of Northern Minnesota. Daniel reaches for his coffee cup a second time and this time he achieves it. The coffee's cold. He doesn't care.

"Probably on base," he says, after a long pause. "I don't have a place yet. I'm not going back." The intensity of the relief he feels at saying that out loud to someone (here) is dizzying. He feels as if he's escaped something. He has no idea what. "I'm pretty sure I still have a job." He sighs; there's no point in putting off capitulation, graceful or otherwise. "Why, thank you for your kind offer. I'd love company on my return flight." He'd rather eat broken glass.

JD smiles. Utterly alien, and it should be a relief -- shouldn't make Daniel feel like he's lost something he didn't even think he had -- but it isn't. "Great," he says. "I'll go tell Mitchell she's got herself another stray."


End file.
